Random Realizations
With the exception of catching a cold, it’s been a fantastic week. Fun things to do, plenty of excitement and opportunities to wear high heels. And along with my trend of expanding wisdom with increasing age, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve discovered over the past seven days. Maybe some of them will be helpful.
- Birthdays are awesome, especially when your kids make you cards.
- With chocolate inside.
- It is possible to survive a week without diet Coke.
- When staying in a chic hotel with exciting on-site nightlife, you have to expect drunken hotel guests.
- Who are incapable of moderating their voices in quiet hallways.
- At 1:25, 1:54, 2:17 and 3:20 am.
- While lying awake silently cursing rude hotel guests, it is possible to forget all semblance of manners or empathy or respect for human life.
- Children get tired-and-cranky exponentially faster when playing at other children’s houses.
- A good playdate can last for eighteen hours, but requires devoted host parents. (XOXO)
- The best possible time to run into people from your past, say, college, is when you are decked to the nines in an expensive dress, killer shoes, hip jewels, and freshly-straightened hair and out for a date with your cutie-patootie hubs at The Four Seasons.
- No matter where you order it, shellfish-over-pasta is just shellfish-over-pasta. Lesson learned.
- However, it is possible to do some very exciting things the next morning with french toast.
- It is possible to still have things to talk with one’s husband about for nearly a whole day, even after seventeen years.
- Chic young things at swanky, hip bars in boutique hotels spend too much time on their cell phones texting people who are elsewhere and not enough time enjoying their surroundings.
- Although they seem to enjoy their fifteen-dollar vodka-and-tonics plenty.
- Thirty-nine and cancer-ridden means that four cocktails over the course of an evening, even with food, will result in a hangover.
- Irrespective of the quantity of water consumed during the same evening.
- Hangovers are quickly dispatched while lying in a pouffy hotel bed watching TV and eating salt-water taffy for breakfast.
- Coughing at night is more annoying than drunken hotel guests outside your room.
- Divorce can be avoided by sending the coughing party (me) to sleep in the guest room.
- All drivers who are not me are complete and utter morons.
- Especially when I’m running late.
I hope I have enlightened you with some of my new old-woman wisdom. I’m home from chemo and off for my daily kip. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.
Cancercoaster
Last night my husband and I were watching that new Tony Robbins series on NBC. The episode featured Tony helping a couple break out of their ruts: at their wedding reception in Mexico, the exuberant groom had dived into the shallow pool to swim over to where his wife and her friends were dancing, and broken his neck. Quadriplegic since that day, they had ceased to be newlywed husband-and-wife, and become nurse-and-patient. During the course of the show, Tony had the excited husband and terrified wife skydiving over Fiji to show them that there’s no limit to what a paraplegic can accomplish but his imagination. (It was a pretty great show, and I’m a cynic. But I dig transformations. Jillian’s my homegal.)
At one point Mr. Wonderful and I were talking about the wife and the role she’d settled into, and how she was paralyzed herself by her fear of losing her husband altogether, her sense of injustice at having to suffer through a life so different than the one she’d imagined. In mid-sentence, Mr. W started to well up, and as I grabbed his hand, he broke down. He said he was remembering the night of my first surgery, and how he’d been feeling all the same things: angry with the doctors; helpless at my illness; terrified of our new future and what it would bring; sad for me and what I would have to go through.
After a long hug, we moved on, but I realized that in addition to cementing our dedication to each other, the moment represented just another stop on the wild ride we’ve been on since 2006. Cancer diagnosis? Down. Find the right oncologist and a plan of attack? Up. IP chemotherapy? Way down. Finish treatment? Up. Nine months of remission and a big thank-you party? WAY up. Recurrence? Doooooown. You get the picture. Cancer patients and those who love them learn an incredible amount in the simple task of waiting: waiting for test results; waiting for scan results; waiting for the surgery date.
I’d love to say that a zen-like patient peacefulness is the result of all of this unpredictable change. But our reactions to the ups and downs have yawed wildly as well. Sometimes I’m able to accept a recurrence notice with resigned determination, while my mother bursts into (prohibited!) tears. Sometimes I come home from a simple office visit and a blood draw and snap at everyone in the house and Mr. Wonderful calms me down and gives me needed space. Other times he rages against his lack of control and we argue about something stupid like taking the last cold Diet Coke out of the fridge (a hanging offense).
I’ve had a busy month in the up-and-down department. From the down of intractable lung mets and decreased physical activity, I sprang back up with the great PET scan results, confirmed by CT last week. But not all the way up, because my left leg swelling kept increasing, and everyone (including me, in tears on Monday) feared it was another blood clot, which would mean blood thinners, which would make me ineligible for the trial that was saving my life (way down). Yesterday I had an ultrasound that showed no trace of a clot, meaning I am cleared to receive lymphedema massage and continue the trial (up Up UP!)
Which brings me back to my post on Friday about good support. By talking openly and honestly, and patiently listening without judgement, Mr. W and I have been able to weather the vagaries of this unpredictable odyssey. It’s definitely been a long learning process, with exemplary moments and embarrassing blow-ups. Often, the patient-listening-without-judgement has had to come in the form of an outside party, namely our therapist, who I maintain is a priceless aid in my recovery. But the result has been the smoothing out of the rough places that used to trip us and send us (and by “us” I mean our whole support team) spiraling off in different directions – now we hold each other up and ride on together.
Certainly the clichéd “fullness of time” has lessened the height of the peaks and the depth of the valleys. I prefer to think of it as a mosaic, or a Seurat painting: up close, each tile or spot of paint seems powerful, distinct; but with distance, the whole image becomes easier to see, the emotional shapes easier to recognize, the cohesion and strength of our family more visible.
I’ve never liked roller coasters. Too fast, too scary, too much stomach-in-the-throat. Since I have to be on this one, I’m glad I have reliable hands to hold onto. Who are yours?
Photo link.
Kids Say the Darndest Things, Vol. II
Well, husbands do, too.
Mr. Wonderful will be running a relay marathon in May, from Boston to Provincetown in two days or some such madness, up all night and riding in one of two vans with eleven soon-to-be-war-buddies while carbo-loading. Some of the group met for a pre-race strategy session/beer tasting at a local watering hole last week, which gave the friends-of-friends a chance to get to know one another.
My friend-whose-idea-the-team-was sent me a message after the meeting was over:
“Last night we were finding out how many at the table were divorced or divorcing (5 out of 7 – yikes!) and Mxxx asked [Mr. Wonderful] if he was divorced and he sweetly said, “No, I’m trying to hold onto my wife as long as possible.” =) Go give him a big fat hug and kiss!”
::sniff, sniff:: He’s the best. I’m a lucky gal.
(It’s okay to go barf if you need to.)
I'm a two-and-a-half time ovarian cancer survivor who is not only determined to make it to sixty but also to look damn good while getting there. My two boys, husband, and dog are counting on me to get out of bed every day, so I might as well wear something cute and make each one COUNT. I'd love to hear from you about your odyssey - sharing makes it all easier to take. And laugh at.
The Carcinista 
